155 pages, Momentum Books, ISBN-13: 978-1938018114
How did a crude French settlement founded in 1701 along the Detroit River become the birthplace of the automotive industry in 1900? Well, I’ll tell ya…or rather, R. J. King will tell ya in Detroit: Engine of America and, as the editor of DBusiness magazine, DBusiness Daily News, Tech and Mobility News, Detroit 500 and Michigan Makers, there is no better person to relate the rise of Detroit (the book ends in 1900, so the fall is unrecorded). For so brief a book, King packs a lot into these mere 155 pages, as just about every important figure and event is brought up put in its proper place as to how it advanced the interests and development of Michigan’s First City. Divided into 11 Chapters, with each chapter dealing with a different decade, Engine of America’s broad argument is that, even before Detroit put the world on wheels through the automobile industry it was a key driver of American economic progress.
Seeing
as, for much of this time, Detroit was a frontier town in the middle of
nowhere, it was forced to become self-sufficient and develop all of its own
industries to survive: first fishing, farming and hunting and then shipping,
stoves, locomotives and related products, all propelled by western migration
and immigration. By the time the automotive industry was founded, all the
pieces were in place for Detroit to become the engine of the world. As Engine
of America shows in so
many ways, Detroit is a rather special place, being not only the oldest city in
the Midwest – take that Chicago! – it is older even than the United States; it
was always a magnet for immigrants, not only from overseas but, especially,
from the East Coast (by 1830 up to 1000 people were arriving daily). So Detroit
has always been a happening place, even if the rest of the country or even the
world didn’t know it, and it still is. Just ask us.
No comments:
Post a Comment